Computers used to be connected systems of components that had different specific purposes. For example, a desktop system might have had a monitor, a keyboard, and a console that housed a processor, disk, and memory. Mainframe computers might have had a set of dumb terminals that were wired to a large processor that in turn was wired to a large memory bank, a disk farm, and a tape farm. Miniaturization changed this paradigm and new types of devices emerged. The new devices were more integrated and tended to have multiple elements for multiple purposes in a single apparatus. For example, laptop computers, then tablet computers, then smart phones with significant computing resources appeared. These new devices all had processors, memory, input devices, and output devices. Unlike separate external components that may have been specialized for special purposes (e.g., monitor, keyboard) the integrated components may have compromised performance to fit in a certain sized apparatus (e.g., phone, tablet).
With multiple types of intelligent devices available, users may have acquired a smart phone, a tablet, a laptop computer, a gaming system, and other computerized devices. All these purchases produce duplicated investment. While having multiple devices provided new opportunities and new flexibility, having multiple devices also produced unanticipated consequences. For example, instead of consuming just enough energy to run a single processor, users may have consumed additional energy to run additional processors. Instead of mastering a single interface to a single device, users may have had to learn to interact with multiple interfaces on multiple devices. Additionally, content may have become distributed between devices and thus may have become more difficult to find and use, or may have gotten out of sync between devices, which in turn may have required sophisticated reconciliation or sharing approaches that consumed time, processing power, and network bandwidth to implement.
As of August 2014 there are nearly two billion smart phones in the world. There are also nearly five hundred million tablet computers in the world. Users increasingly carry their own content on their own mobile devices or access their content through their mobile devices. For example, smart phone users and tablet users may store movies, books, video games, and other content on their mobile devices. It may be possible to synchronize content on one device (e.g., phone) with content on another device (e.g., tablet), but the synchronization consumes time, energy, communication bandwidth, and computing resources. Consider a user who is reading a book on their tablet who reaches a certain point and then stops. The user may then pick up their smart phone and want to start reading the same book. The book may be available on the smart phone but may not be opened to the most recently read position. The user may then need to take some explicit actions to synchronize the content on the two devices. Conventional attempts to connect multiple devices include Internet sharing and linking. The users of mobile devices also increasingly carry or access productivity applications, presentation applications, and other applications on their smart phone, tablet, phablet, or other mobile device. Once again, it may be possible to synchronize data for these applications between devices but the synchronization consumes time, energy, communication bandwidth, and computing resources. Users also increasingly perform tasks that used to be performed on larger devices (e.g., laptop computers, desktop computers) on their handheld mobile devices. For example, users browse the Internet, interact with social media, and play games on their handheld mobile devices.
Smart phones and tablets used to be significantly different sizes and seemed to have distinct divergent roles. For example, the smart phone may have been much smaller than the tablet with limited input/output capabilities but extensive processing power and connectivity while the tablet may have been much larger than the phone with extensive input/output capabilities but limited processing power, connectivity, or battery life. The phone may have been used primarily to make calls, text, or do email while the tablet may have been used to read books or papers, view content, or to play games. Over time, as processing power was put in ever smaller form factors, mobile devices (e.g., smart phones) tended to become more powerful. For example, the processing power available in a 2014 smart phone may rival that of the original mainframe computers and recent desktop and laptop computers. Smart phones seem to be getting larger and tablets seem to be getting smaller. However, smart phones still tend to have inferior input/output capabilities compared to tablets and some laptop computers. For example, smart phones may have smaller screens that limit how much data can be displayed and the size of a virtual keyboard that can be displayed. Some attempts have been made to get smart phones and tablets to work together so that the smart phones may benefit from the increased tablet display sizes for input/output, but these attempts have involved significant processing resources on both the smart phone and the tablet. While these attempts may have achieved some interoperability between smart phones and tablets, content still tends to be difficult to share and easily gets out of sync. The difficulty of connecting the devices may have made it difficult, if even possible at all, to transfer the user experience between devices. Additionally, there is still significant duplication of resources on the devices, which leads to duplicated investment. A user may have a smart phone that costs several hundred dollars, a tablet that costs several hundred dollars, and a laptop computer that costs several hundred dollars or perhaps a thousand dollars, all of which perform many of the same tasks using duplicate components (e.g., processor, memory, display, input devices, communication components) that all consume energy. The duplication increases costs, causes additional energy consumption, and increases complexity in at least content sharing.